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Comment by tjoff | Hacker News Reader

I still think Windows 10 is several orders of magnitudes worse.

Android is a toy OS. Very few does anything serious on it. A desktop OS on the other hand has access to the very most sensitive information you ever come across. If you can't trust your desktop OS everything is game over.

Windows 10 telemetry is the most convincing reason to jump ship that has ever existed in my opinion.

That said, android is of course also very bad. Problem is that there is no decent alternative to iOS and android. It is quite frustrating.

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> Android is a toy OS.

Aside from the fact that Google also owns a search engine you might've heard of (so it's not like they only make phone operating systems), I think this type of thinking is quite old-fashioned.

People put most of their lives into their phones these days. They carry them everywhere, document their lives through photos, call and text their friends wherever they are, read the news, direct them to their destination, play games, etc. To pretend that most people's primary computing device is a "toy OS" is to pretend as though we are still in 2004. That's not the world we live in anymore.

I don't personally own a smartphone anymore (precisely because of these sorts of privacy invasions), but I sure as hell wouldn't pretend that the majority of people don't use smartphones as their primary computing device. I agree that Windows is also absolutely immoral, but we shouldn't be debating which is worse here -- they're both reprehensible.

>most people's primary computing device

Phones are most people's only computing device. Many who have never used a traditional computer own and use smartphones.

I think a comment like this should be made with a reference to a source as it defies belief.

I don't have stats, but if you think about the number of phone users in places like India, China, most of Africa who probably had very little access to computers before it makes intuitive sense to me.

A problem with statements such as yours as that I imagine you would have difficulty even estimating the popularity of smart phones in America, let alone the world. For instance since I can find reliable data for 2015, what percent of Americans do you think had smart phones in 2015? The answer, written backwards, is rouf ytxis. Of course I suspect around your sample of people, it's near 100%. This creates the stage for a very poor level of intuition as you then extrapolate such views outwards where they become even less correct.

So for instance smartphone ownership rates in India is 18%. [1] By contrast this article [2] overviews some data in a survey from Dell India which gives various hints on PC usage. Overall 51% of families have somebody that is PC literate, 79% in East India stated they used a PC at cyber cafes, and so on. It's safe to say that your hypothesis is not really supported in India.

China has a vastly higher smartphone usage, but they also have a vastly higher PC usage with dirt cheap and constantly filled cyber cafes on seemingly every corner of every street. The only information I could find on PC usage was here [3] but that study is hopelessly outdated. As it mentions, "according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) (2010), the average number of home computers per 100 urban households in China increased steadily from 5.91 in 1999 to 65.74 in 2009, or at an average of 27.24 percent per year." The absurdly rapid growth rate makes it difficult to say anything other than that PC usage is certainly not rare in China. Your hypothesis is going to be, at best, questionable there and exclusively dependent upon the rural population.

[1] - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/16/china-outpac...

[2] - https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/06/12/what-indian-pc-user...

[3] - http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3767/31...

>Your hypothesis is going to be, at best, questionable there and exclusively dependent upon the rural population.

Here's my personal experience

I live in Africa. In my middle-class household, there are 10 adults - 4 Laptops, 14 smart phones and 9 TVs.

In the few African countries I have lived, cyber cafe business/usage is rapidly declining because of a combination of cheaper smartphones and cheaper mobile data.

A brand new dirt cheap smartphone costs approximately 1-2 months of minimum wage salary. It'll work 8 - 48 hours before needing a recharge. A small power bank can triple the hours.

A brand new Core i3 laptop on the other hand costs at least 6 months salary. Battery life 4 - 6 hours. And needs a modem to get online.

Interesting! Yeah the reason your comment stuck out to me is because I enjoy traveling around Asia in particular, and over here in many places PCs are bigger than ever. You have entire multistory shopping centers dedicated to PCs and PC parts which you can pick up for dirt cheap. And even in rural[ish] areas there are internet cafes absolutely everywhere that are always loaded. People use them mostly for gaming, but every once in a blue moon some work gets done on them as well. In either case not really something smartphones are so great for.

For what it's worth the smartphones are also very popular and start around $20, computers around $50. But they're certainly complimenting each other rather than cannibalizing. Why do you think the same might not be true in Africa?

>smartphones are also very popular and start around $20, computers around $50

I can't even get a used laptop for $50 in my place.

>Why do you think the same might not be true in Africa?

I can't speak for the whole of Africa. However I know two personally (Nigeria and Ghana). And a few others by acquaintances - togo, Benin...

First reason: Earning power, salaries have remained relatively static for at least 10 years but the local currencies have depreciated at least 4 times within the same period.

Second reason: Production. Computers and smartphones are produced in China and India. All components needed for these devices are available within the continent. Thus, the price would be dirt cheap there.

To put the first point in context. I'm using a 5 year old HP Envy without touch screen. I bought it for N130,000 then. The equivalent of the same laptop should cost less right? Nope. It costs N250,000+ right now.

Same thing in Ghana. 8 years ago, 1 cedi = 1usd. Now 1 cedi = 4.85 cedi. Salary for a government secondary school teacher was 800 cedi then. It's 800 cedi now.

>But they're certainly complimenting each other rather than cannibalizing. Maybe in Asia. People who grow up using Macs find it difficult to use Windows right?

It's easy for people who grew up with PCs to use smart phones. But the reverse isn't the case. I know many people who grew up with phones but now have laptops - it's easy to spot them - they use abbreviations excessively on chat.

All they use their laptops for are movies and the occasional Microsoft word. Everything else - even gaming is done on their phones or tablets.

I hope this partly answers your question.

Interesting. Appreciate the insights!

I made a slight edit. 1 cedi = $1 USD in 2012...

> To pretend that most people's primary computing device is a "toy OS" is to pretend as though we are still in 2004. That's not the world we live in anymore.

And yet it still is a toy OS, compared to what it could be if it was designed with productivity and empowering end users in mind, as opposed to being a shallow consumption and communications platform.

That's orthogonal to the tracking angle, though. GP is wrong in assuming that just because desktop Windows is not a toy OS, it's automatically exposed to more sensitive data. It's not, because - as you noted - most people use smartphones as their primary computation device (for what little it can do). There's also another angle here - desktop PCs may contain most of your work data, but people don't really care about securing that. Privacy of their personal messages and photos, which are mostly accessed via smartphones these days, is of more importance to them.

> Very few does anything serious on it. A desktop OS on the other hand has access to the very most sensitive information

Thats why more and more people use it exclusively for everything, including online banking.

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